Keeping it real: A conversation with Christopher Shinn

Christopher Shinn is one of the leading American playwrights of his generation. Yet his work has been more consistently supported in the UK than in the US. His most recent play, Teddy Ferrara, was greeted with hostility by the American press when it premiered in Chicago in the spring of 2013. In this interview with critic Stephen Bottoms, Shinn discusses his work, its reception, and what he perceives as a censorious cultural climate in the United States. He also considers the status of dramatic realism in a postmodern context, and assesses his own relationship to the American dramatic canon. © 2014 Taylor and Francis.